It remains uncertain whether Mercedes’ and Porsche’s hometown Stuttgart will introduce diesel driving bans next year as currently planned, according to the regional government. Green state premier Winfried Kretschmann told local newspapers the bans were “not set in stone yet”: “We haven’t imposed driving bans yet, and maybe they won’t come at all.” He said the bans could be avoided if the car industry managed to retrofit older diesel engines to reduce local air pollution. During a visit to a Mercedes factory, Kretschmann said: “Clean diesel engines exist, and they will come.”

Read the interview in German here and an article in Spiegel Online on the issue here.

The German car industry has not given up yet on its highly profitable combustion engine, reports Sebastian Schaal for business magazine WirtschaftsWoche. “Electric propulsion remains Plan B, because Plan A is simply working too well,” he wrote. At an industry conference, carmakers and suppliers stressed last week that combustion engines still offer potential to reduce CO2 emissions, and discussed ways to extend their lifespan beyond 2030 by using “e-fuels” made with renewable electricity.

The French government’s order to decommission the contested nuclear reactor Fessenheim can’t make up for the fact that President Francois Hollande hasn’t pursued a French “Energiewende” due to resistance from the nuclear lobby, Leo Klimm writes in a commentary for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Like a state within the state, nuclear plant operator EDF dictates the energy policy,” he argues. Hollande accepted that EDF prevented the plant’s closure in 2016, brokered a 500-million-euro compensation by taxpayers and has now made opening a new nuclear plant the precondition for closing the 40-year-old reactor near the German border, Klimm writes. At the beginning of his term, Hollande said he wanted to shut down 24 nuclear plants – “now Hollande is leaving and hasn’t closed a single one,” Klimm says.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on citizens to make better use of existing financial support programmes to replace old heating systems in her weekly video podcast. She said households were crucial for increasing efficiency and the success of the energy transition, according to a press release. Germany’s 13 million old heating systems should be replaced step-by-step, she added.

The EU agency Fusion for Energy (F4E) has rejected calls by German MPs to cut funding for the fusion reactor ITER and use the money for research on conventional energy transition technologies instead, Daniel Wetzel writes on Welt Online. “We Europeans spend about a billion euros a day on energy imports,” F4E director Johannes Schwemmer said, adding that the sums spent on ITER were comparatively modest. The nuclear fusion reactor, currently under construction in southern France, is slated to cost the EU more than eleven billion euros, Wetzel writes. Nuclear experts of the German Green Party and the Left Party said the EU ought to leave the international project as ITER was “a waste of taxpayer’s money” and a “nonstarter.”

Germany’s current system of levies, taxes, and fees on energy is unsuitable for the next phase of the country’s energy transition, according to an analysis by energy think tank Agora Energiewende*. For heating oil, these add up to a mere 0.6 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. The current system “punishes climate-friendly energy consumption, while rewarding climate-damaging behaviour,” according to a press release. The think tank’s director Patrick Graichen said at a press conference a fundamental reform of the system was one of the central challenges for the next government but essential to encourage the use of electricity in heating and transport. “Otherwise a comprehensive energy transition won’t work.”

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